@barlop I am sorry, do you want to change the font color to white?
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Michal KrzychSep 5 '13 at 9:52

no dude. this is the questioner's question, so one might ask, why might the questioner want the color to be white(i.e. effectively somewhat hidden) - that is what I was suggesting. Perhaps he wants the "formula" to be there not to display in the cell e.g. not to display when he prints it and not to display in the grid, but there for him to see, so to display in the bar when he selects the cell, then he might want to change font color to white. because white text on a white background, i.e. on a white background grid in the cell, makes the white contents of the cell invisible.
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barlopSep 5 '13 at 21:34

@barlop I'm not sure where you got the idea that the OP wanted 'white'... "leave these entries as they are?" means display as -A23 and not let excel turn it into =-A23 as far as I see (which is excel's behaviour if you try it).
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JerrySep 6 '13 at 4:51

@barlop I'm sorry I think you must have misunderstood the question. I agree with the above Jerry's comment
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Michal KrzychSep 6 '13 at 7:14